Hey, it’s the Commies, Geek Speak’s Oscars of comics!

I don’t get out much when it comes to movies, but I sure do hit the comic shop a lot. Which brings us once again to the Commies, Geek Speak’s answer to the Oscars for the best stuff in sequential art. Every year around the Academy Awards, I like to dish out some virtual hardware for the comics and creators that make all those Wednesday trips to the pull box worthwhile. So without further ado, let’s celebrate those 2012 blockbusters in comics, no tuxes or Botox required.

BEST PUBLISHER: MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT
So many publishers put out some great books last year. For this award I looked at what publisher cranked out the most comics I had to read the moment I walked away from the register. Marvel won out with the likes of “Amazing Spider-Man,” “Daredevil,” “Thor: God of Thunder,” “Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man” and “Hawkeye.” Yes, Marvel still can’t get back on track with the Big Event thing. (“Avengers vs. X-Men”? Really?) And yes, the Marvel NOW! reboot/renumbering of titles late last year was just a staggered attempt at catching DC Comics’ New 52 fire. But what the House of Ideas lacks in, well, ideas, it more than makes up for in fun must-read titles that didn’t suffer from crossover-itis and did come out of what’s NOW! relatively unscathed.

BEST HERO: HAWKEYE
Hawkeye got such short shrift on the big screen in “The Avengers,” but boy did he break out in comics in 2012. The new series “Hawkeye” shows us just what Clint Barton’s up to when he isn’t firing crazy-tipped arrows for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. What he does is hit all the right marks as a flawed but fantastic hero who looks out for the little guy often by hanging out with him.

BEST VILLAIN: NEGAN
And you thought the Governor was a sick pug. Negan, the biker-clad leader of the Saviors, has all but usurped the former head of Woodbury as the vilest villain in “The Walking Dead,” giving our hero Rick and his friends all new kinds of, ahem, headaches. Negan speaks profanely and carries a big spiky baseball bat named Lucille that does his bloodier talking for him. Case in point:

BEST SHOCK: ‘THE WALKING DEAD’ NO. 100
Spoiler alert just in case. “Walking Dead” writer Robert Kirkman makes this easy, and by easy I mean brutal. The milestone 100th issue gave us one of the most cringe-inducing character deaths yet, with Negan cracking poor Glenn’s head like a pulpy pinata. This being “The Walking Dead,” you expect anybody in any given issue to meet a grisly shocking end. That it was Glenn, a fan favorite and proud papa to be, still hit us hard. Though not as hard as Negan hit Glenn. OK, I’ll stop now.

BEST EVENT: ‘SPIDER-MEN’
Last year was Spider-Man’s 50th anniversary, so you just knew the ultimate team-up player was due for his Ultimate team-up. In “Spider-Men,” the original Spider-Man gets zapped to Marvel’s alternate Ultimate universe, where he comes webbed-mask-to-webbed-mask with the new Ultimate Spider-Man, young Miles Morales. “Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man” writer Brian Bendis and series artist Sara Pichelli were the perfect hosts for the 616 Spidey with a simple five-issue tale that made sense without over-exploiting the paradigm.

BEST LIMITED SERIES: ‘SPIDER-MEN’
What I said above.

BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIE: ‘THE AVENGERS’
Was it ever in doubt? With “The Avengers,” director Joss Whedon delivered the best of both mediums — a truly shiny action adventure that celebrates Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic super-team with the right blockbuster effects and screenplay smarts. Whedon fans have always known he was the perfect guy for the gig. The “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” creator just proved to the rest of the world he was the best man to assemble the greatness. No offense, Nick Fury.

BEST NEW COMIC: ‘HAWKEYE’
This was a tough one. I was this close to giving it to “Saga” by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples, if only for giving us BKV’s pop culture smarts in a sci-fi “Romeo and Juliet” with Staples’ lovely pencils. Matt Kindt’s “Mind MGMT” also almost stole the raygun for its deft psychic espionage. Ditto Paul Cornell’s brilliant “Saucer Country” for its “The X-Files” meets “The West Wing” intrigue and Jason Aaron’s “Thor: God of Thunder” for elevating Goldilocks to new heights, and across three timelines no less. But my gut says “Hawkeye” because it’s basically the new “Daredevil” — a fun, accessible comic book with great art that celebrates everything great about its title character. Like he did with “Invincible Iron Man,” writer Matt Fraction once again shows he can pen a comic hero like he popped out of a killer cool film or TV franchise. Art by the likes of David Aja doesn’t hurt either.

BEST ARTIST: SARA PICHELLI
The Italian artist has made a name for herself with her clean pop-art style. Right now it looks right at home on Webheads, be it her frequent work on “Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man” or those five glorious little issues of the limited series “Spider-Men.” No matter the character or the costume, Pichelli delivers dynamic action and expression with the simplest of lines, a lot like the work of Steve McNiven only much more fluid and frequent. Now give Pichelli more to do, please.

BEST WRITER: SCOTT SNYDER
We have ourselves a repeat. Last year, Snyder took the Best Writer Commie for pumping new narrative blood into the blood-sucker genre with “American Vampire” and the Caped Crusader with his stint on “Detective Comics” and then the New 52’s “Batman.” Snyder’s 2012 work on the Dark Knight sealed the two-fer. The Court of Owls and return of the Joker in “Batman” were two of the best Dark Knight storylines to hit comics in years. Meanwhile, Snyder maintained his consistent awesome output on “American Vampire.”

BEST COMIC: ‘BATMAN’
A great character like Batman deserves great comics worthy of his storied lineage, tales familiar yet at the same time refreshing and altogether new. Which is, let’s face it, pretty impossible. And yet “Batman” writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo pulled it off. First they improved upon what was already the best rogues gallery in comics with the Court of Owls, a creepy masonic-like enemy both unheard of yet also historic in the lives of Batman and Bruce Wayne. Then Snyder and Capullo ripped the face right off the old Joker saga with a demented new bat-and-mouse game in the “Death of the Family” arc. It was all so familiar yet refreshing, dark yet inspiring. In other words, so impossible, so great, so Batman.